Martha+Kohnke

On September 24, 1927, 35-year-old homemaker Martha Kohnke died in Chicago from a criminal abortion performed that day. Nurse Emma Schultz was held by the coroner on October 5.

Schultz had also been implicated in the abortion death of Mary Bambrick in October of 1911, but that case never went to trial.

Martha, a Chicago native, was the wife of John Kohnke and the daughter of Polish immigrants Lawrence and Catherine Herek.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see [|Abortion in the 1920s].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Source:
 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]

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